Back Bends

Mostly I tolerate backbends. Except bridge. I hate bridge. I feel like I'm trying to stuff tissues into a full tissue box. Maybe it's because I'm short waist-ed.  I'm very obedient though, I always include a bridge or two in my practice (3 my first yoga teacher used to say- "backbends are like pancakes, you throw the first 2 away")

Then while I was traveling I accidentally took a hot yoga class where they did tons and tons of standing backbends. I could tell the woman in front of me LOVED backbends. She just had that sense of joy in her backbends, of spaciousness and ease as she gazed evenly behind her.

Moreover, as I got on my mat the next day some knowing had remained in my body. There was some spaciousness left in my muscles and spine from the previous days class. Every sun salutation brought me back to that surprising feeling of openness as I stretched backward from standing mountain pose.  I returned to my home studio requesting, of all things, backbends.

I naturally have kind of an extreme curve in my lower back (my parents and pediatrician used to worry about it when I was little). It means that I am kind of already in a forward fold just standing in Tadasana, and it means that my lower back often feels a little crunched. Every time I visit a new class or meet a new teacher their first recommendation is that I curl my tailbone under. (I know. I'm working on it. I've been working on it since I was 6. Sigh.)

Our teacher often gives the suggestion during backbends to pull the deepest curve out of the lower back and into the middle and upper back. This suggestion plus years of chest openers is finally starting to amount to something- the feeling that backbending can be an opening up instead of a closing down. Recently we were in Pigeon pose and the teacher handed me a pair of blocks "I think you will like this better with blocks" he said. As I grounded my hands into the blocks there was just more and more room to move that curve into the middle and upper back. It was challenging, it was interesting, it was fresh and new. I could finally imagine a time when I might like backbends.